


Keeper's Snitch

by mad_martha



Series: Checkmate Series [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-27
Updated: 2011-05-27
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:12:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slytherin Ron Weasley persuades Hufflepuff Harry Potter to go just a little bit further.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeper's Snitch

There shouldn't have been anyone in the Hufflepuff changing rooms except Harry, but when he switched the shower off he heard the squeak of a rough-soled Quidditch boot on the tiles outside.  And when he reached for his towel, a lean, freckled hand held it out to him.

 

"You're not supposed to be in here," Harry said warily, as he emerged from the showers with the towel securely wrapped about his hips.

 

Ron Weasley was leaning against the wall casually, looking amused.  He was still dressed in his Keeper's gear and the green and white robes glistened with a light spangle of moisture from the drizzle that had set up as the match finished.

 

"Sore loser, Potter?" he asked, smirking.

 

"Nope.  I caught the Snitch."

 

"Pity your Chasers and Keeper weren't up to quite the same standard."

 

"Pity Slytherin can't play without cheating," Harry retorted.

 

Ron's eyes went wide and mocking.  "Did I cheat?  Did I?  I'm hurt."

 

"Piss off, Weasley, and let me get dressed."  Harry turned his back on the other youth.

 

There was a pause, then Ron said in a different voice, "I don't cheat, Harry.  You know that."

 

"Bully for you.  That makes a lot of difference when the other six players do."

 

"What do you want me to say?" the Slytherin demanded.

 

"Nothing," Harry muttered. 

 

He concentrated on ignoring Ron, opening the long narrow door of his locker, pulling out his clothes, and quite casually stripping off the towel so that he could dry himself.  A little nudity didn't bother Harry; he'd been raised to believe that clothing was for warmth, protection or adornment, not prudish concealment, and that his body was his own and nothing to be ashamed of.  It was at moments like this that his enlightened upbringing was tested, though, for Ron didn't leave or turn away – rather, he stayed leaning up against the wall where he was in a good position for looking.  Harry could feel the Slytherin's eyes running over him like the warm light from a lamp, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

 

He finished drying himself, unconsciously lingering over passing the towel over his chest, under his arms ….  He was sixteen years old, his body already reaching out for the manhood that emotionally he wasn't fully prepared to deal with yet.  Friendship with Ron – if it could be called that – was like a ride on a half-tuned broomstick, all jolts and dips interspersed by moments of sweetly hair-raising and breathless flight.  Right now he was balancing on that broom, but he couldn't tell if they were on the edge of flight together or poised for another fall.  He didn't know what to do with that feeling.

 

Harry pulled on underwear and socks, then his jeans, pausing to button the fly with his back still turned to Ron.  He was reaching for his black and yellow striped Hufflepuff jersey when Ron reached around him and plucked the damp towel from the hook on the locker door.

 

"You missed a spot," he said into Harry's ear, and he stroked the towel slowly across his back, between the shoulder-blades. 

 

A jolt of sensation went up Harry's back, somehow simultaneously plunging into his belly, and before he fully knew what he was doing Harry had half-turned, snatching the towel out of Ron's hands.  Ron jumped back, hands held up in mock surrender.

 

"Hey, I was just drying a damp bit – "

 

"Don't," Harry said sharply, but he could feel the scalding heat spreading across his face and neck and even his chest.  He blushed with appalling and dramatic ease – "Like a girl!" Eloise Midgen sometimes teased.  It was impossible to hide his feelings.

 

Ron's bright blue eyes went from teasing to intense in a heartbeat.

 

"Don't touch you, don't tease you, don't _what_ , Harry?"

 

"Just don't." 

 

Harry turned away again, painfully aware that even the back of his neck would be advertising his confusion, and pulled the jersey over his head, manoeuvring it over his spectacles.  He pulled it down around his torso, a comforting softness and warmth against his skin, and felt ashamed of his need of it as armour.

 

"You've been pushing me away for months."  The other boy's tone was difficult to interpret.  Angry?  Hurt?  Frustrated?  "You let me get just _so_ close, but no further.  You let me touch your hand, your face – you even let me _kiss_ you before Easter – but when I try to hold you or kiss you again, you won't let me.  What's your problem, Harry?"

 

On this subject, at least, Harry felt he was on solid ground, bolstered by the frank advice of the four men who had raised him.

 

"I'm not ready for anything else," he said firmly.  Honesty compelled him to add, "I shouldn't have let you kiss me.  That – that was unfair."

 

Ron let out a hissing breath, almost a laugh if laughter could sound so bitter.

 _"Not ready,"_ he repeated to himself.  "Not ready.  Fine.  So when _will_ you be ready?  Because I'm waiting here, Harry, and I think I'm being pretty bloody patient about it under the circumstances."

 

"I don't know, do I?"  Harry looked at the other youth's face and saw a mixture of emotions there that was almost a match for his own.  "If you must know … I'm just … I'm a bit scared of you."

 

He couldn't have said it if they hadn't been some-sort-of-friends, if they hadn't been playing chess together for nearly three years, sharing oddments of information about their lives and strange confidences, about Harry's unusual family structure and Ron's helpless resentment of his twin brothers' tormenting and the frustration and mystery that was teenaged girls.  He couldn't have said it if it hadn't been for Ron making the first move so many months ago, confessing with feigned indifference that actually he found Harry physically attractive.

 

And then he almost wished he hadn't said it after all, for Ron was suddenly in his personal space, pushing the wooden locker door shut and pinning it closed with one hand, leaning into Harry and reminding the Hufflepuff of the several inches' difference in their heights.

 

"Scared of me?" the redhead said quietly.  "Scared how?"

 

Harry couldn't quite breathe.

 

"Scared of losing your virginity with another bloke?" Ron persisted with unnerving accuracy.  "Scared of me having something personal on you?  Why, what do you think I'm going to do, Harry?  Go and brag about it to Malfoy and his mates?  Add it to the scoreboard in our dormitory?  Don't you trust me to keep it to myself?"

 

"Maybe," Harry managed.  "And maybe – maybe scared you'll hurt me.  Scared you know more than me and this is just a laugh for you, watching me make an idiot of myself.  Again."

 

There was a pause.

 

"I don't laugh at you," Ron said, still in the same semi-intimate tone.  "I tease you.  That's different."

 

"Right."  Harry couldn't quite look him in the eye.  "Well, I don't want to be teased about this.  It makes me feel really uncomfortable around you."

 

"I'm not teasing you about this."

 

"Okay."

 

"But maybe you could tease me instead and then you'd feel better about it."

 

Harry's breath stopped and his green eyes flew to Ron's face.  "What?"

 

There was no mischief in Ron's face now, only that compelling, disturbing intensity.

 

"There's teasing and there's teasing," he said.  "You know what, Harry?  You can take your clothes off in front of me and it's nothing really.  But watching you put them back on is …."  For a split second he paused and Harry, unable to look away from his face, suddenly saw the pupils of his eyes dilate.  "You dress up the way other people strip off," he finished unsteadily.

 

In that brief moment, hearing the unexpected quaver in his voice, Harry was reminded that Ron was only sixteen too.  And that was reassuring to him in a way that Ron's clever words couldn't be.  Sometimes the Slytherin could seem so much older.

 

"How … how do you mean, I can tease you?" he asked, unsure.

 

Ron held out his left hand, still laced into its protective dragonhide gauntlet, like an offering.

 

"If you're scared of what I could do … _you_ could strip _me_ instead."

 

Harry thought he might pass out.  He couldn't breathe properly, and there was scandalous heat flooding into his belly at the thought of realising this one jealously guarded secret wish.

 

"You … want me to take your clothes off," he said, wanting to be sure he had this right before he did something that could get him laughed out of the school before he had a chance to start his final year.

 

"That's right."  Ron's voice wasn't just unsteady now; it was husky and raw.

 

"And you - you'll do what?"

 

"I'll _let_ you."

 

Harry swallowed hard.  He wondered just how many ways he could humiliate himself here … he wondered if it would be worth it anyway.  He also wondered what it said about him that only one thing was really holding him back:

 

"We'll be caught."

 

"No, we won't."  Ron seemed so sure.  "Your team-mates probably think you're walking off your disappointment - you know, like you usually do."  Yeah, Harry knew.  " _My_ team-mates think I'm privately celebrating somewhere with someone.  Like I usually do."  Harry knew that too.  Ron was usually with _him_ , alternately teasing, mocking, coaxing, commiserating ….  "No one's coming back here, Harry.  We're safe to do what we like."

 

Harry couldn't quite believe that, but he was tangled too far in Ron's web to care.  He found himself staring at the other boy's throat instead, where ivory skin and freckles met the collar of his bottle green knitted sweater.

 

He wondered if Ron's skin was that same ivory tone all over and what it would feel like to touch it.

 

Ron had seen Harry undressed a couple of times (Harry invariably lost those strip chess games Ron liked to play) but Harry had never seen Ron with less on than his t-shirt and jeans.  Ron said strip chess put an edge on Harry's game, but to Harry it rather seemed the other way around.

 

"So, are you going to do anything?" Ron asked him quietly now.

 

Gods.

 

Harry slowly reached out and took Ron's hand in his, thinking _I can stop this anytime if I want to.  Taking his pads off doesn't mean anything._  

 

The gauntlets were made of tough dragonhide, stiff and dark with years of use not only by Ron himself but by two of his older brothers.  They were heavier, more thickly padded than the gauntlets Harry wore as Seeker, covering his hands completely rather than just extending to the first knuckle of his fingers, and went halfway up the forearms with lacing to the wrists.  As Harry tugged on the knotted, heavily waxed lacing he noted a tiny delicate mend in the stitching between the thumb and the forefinger.

 

The lace yielded and he loosened the long 'collar' of the gauntlet so it could be slipped off Ron's hand.  It had been put on over the sleeve of his sweater and Ron tugged at the woollen garment to loosen it with a sigh of relief.  Harry caught his newly bared hand without thinking and gently rubbed at fingers and palm to ease the stiffness he knew from his own experience Ron would be feeling.

 

The redhead was smiling at him a little oddly when he let go, but Ron only extended the other hand for Harry to remove that gauntlet as well.  Once again, when the hand was free he massaged it gently, noting with a strange quiver in his stomach that Ron had square, capable hands with strong fingers.

 

Considering that Quidditch was a sport that relied on aerial speed and agility, the protective gear always seemed incredibly stiff and heavy to Harry.  But it had to be, considering that bad weather never stopped play and the game could become life-threateningly violent.  All Quidditch players wore a similar heavy oiled canvas robe over the rest of their clothes, open-fronted, around knee-length (slightly longer on the shorter, more lightly-built Seekers), laced at the chest, with quarter-length sleeves and a hood that, so far as Harry could tell, served no purpose as it was too loose to stay on once you took flight.

 

Avoiding looking the Slytherin in the eye, he focussed on unlacing the green and white robe and tugging it off.  It was damp and weighty; he folded the wet side neatly inwards and put it on the bench with the gauntlets.  Underneath, Ron wore more leather padding across his back, shoulders and stomach, ribbed to make it flexible and buckled at either side.  Beaters wore the same.  Harry unbuckled the worn and curling leather straps, thinking that this piece of equipment had probably been inherited from one of the Weasley twins.  They had been Slytherins too, although the rest of the family – according to Ron – had been sorted into Gryffindor.

 

It said a great deal about Ron's general build that even with all this padding on, he still managed to look slim.  Harry paused, wondering what to remove next. 

 

Ron solved the dilemma by waggling one foot, clad in a heavy dragonhide boot.  He had more pads up to his knees – a little like the ones Harry had seen cricket batsmen wearing when his Muggle grandfather took him to a game – but that was common to all players.  Those pads would have to come off first.  Harry turned the other boy around gently and knelt behind him for a few minutes while he pulled the thicker leather laces undone and slipped the pads off. 

 

Temptation overcame him for a moment then.

 

The players from the four houses all wore the same thick, cream-coloured corduroy trousers with a double thickness of material between the thighs and across the seat, and the boys wore a stiffened leather crotch-guard.  Harry couldn't stop himself running his hands up over the warm, cloth-covered contours of Ron's legs and rear, and he felt a jolt go through the other boy just before he unlaced the crotch-guard and let it fall.

 

They were both breathing a little more unsteadily when Harry straightened up and Ron turned to face him.  The Hufflepuff could feel the hectic flush moving across his face and throat, but the Slytherin too was pink and the tips of his ears were scarlet.

 

Harry sat down on the bench and pulled Ron's foot onto his lap (making the Slytherin hop unsteadily on the other foot for a moment) so that he could unlace the boot.  He did this almost matter-of-factly, tugging it off and the thick, ribbed green sock underneath as well, but as with the other boy's hands he paused for a moment to massage the toes, arch and ankle gently, smoothing any faint ridges in the skin from where the lacing had been too tight.  He performed the same service for the other foot, then slowly stood up.

 

Now was the moment if Harry wanted to call time on this scene, but when he looked at Ron's face, the other boy wasn't mocking, or teasing, or indifferent now.  He was wide-eyed, open faced and perhaps just as astonished at the odd little ripples that seemed to be happening between them.  And so for once it was Harry who made the first move.

 

"Sweater," he mouthed, unable to make himself say the word aloud or even whisper it, and he reached out to take hold of the bottom hem of the garment.  Ron had to help him.  They pulled it up and as they drew it over his head Harry couldn't help pushing his fingers into the ruffled red hair that emerged from underneath.  It was Ron who pulled it off his wrists and tossed it onto the pile of other gear; underneath he wore a long-sleeved, off-white shirt.  There was no collar but the short open placket was secured with a tiny loop and button at the throat.

 

These shirts were fairly standard gear too, produced in either brushed cotton or a cotton/silk blend.  Harry's own was the cotton/silk kind, but Ron came from a poorer family and his was plain cotton, soft and thin from repeated washings.  When it seemed that Ron would help him remove this as well, Harry pushed his hands away.

 

"I'm supposed to be undressing you," he whispered, which stopped the other boy more effectively than any else he could have done.

 

Harry brushed his fingers over the warm, sweat-damp material as he unlooped the neck.  Ron had dark gold freckles, not in a wild mosaic covering his skin as his twin brothers and sister did, but in a spray across his nose, cheeks and chin, fading and growing sparser as they moved down his throat to his collarbone.  He was tense but cooperative as Harry gathered the material around his neck and pulled the shirt up over his head.  It was a little too big and loose on him – so many of his clothes were hand-me-downs that didn't quite fit – and when he raised his arms it slipped over his head easily, leaving a wildly tousled head behind.  Harry tugged it off his arms, his eyes fixed more on the way Ron's freckles faded into non-existence over his broad, pale shoulders than on the garment.

 

And in that moment of distraction Ron moved, sharp and swift, snatching the shirt from Harry's hands and tossing it aside.  Two quick steps forward and he seized the smaller boy by the elbows, jerking him closer.  His hands were moving to clasp Harry's face before Harry himself had fully realised what was happening, then he was kissing the Hufflepuff with ruthless impatience.

 

It was a lip bruising, messy kind of kiss – not at all like the only previous kiss they had shared, which had been a more of a brush of the lips by comparison.  This was decidedly rough and demanding, and yet Harry, inexplicably thrilled to his core by it, did not protest.  He didn't know what to focus on first; the taste of Ron's mouth, the feel of damp, warm skin under his hands or … the fact that Ron was unmistakably as hard as Harry was himself.  That last sensation brought him back to himself, the tightness of his jeans matched by the tightness of Ron's close-fitting Quidditch trousers.  Harry pulled back with a gasp.

 

"No!"

 

"What!"  For a second he thought Ron might lash out, he looked so cheated and frustrated.  "Damn it, Harry – "

 

Harry stalled him with one upraised hand and for the first time the Hufflepuff looked just a little bit dangerous himself.

 

"We're not done," he said, green eyes feverishly bright behind his glasses.  "You started this, Ron, but I'm finishing it."

 

For a moment the Slytherin stared at him, breathless, angry, a little confused.  Harry didn't blame him, even though he was revelling in what had just happened.

 

Ron might not know it yet, but he had just lost control of the situation.

 

Then he seemed to accept what Harry was saying, shoulders dropping and nodding his head as he stretched his arms out to the side once more.

 

"Go on, then."

 

Who was the virgin sacrifice now?  But Harry didn't move to resume stripping the other boy.  Instead he grabbed the hem of his own jersey and pulled it roughly up over his head.  He tugged it off and tossed it to one side, staring challengingly at the redhead.  Then he unbuttoned his jeans and let them drop, stepping out of them.  He bent to tug his socks off, and when he straightened up and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers, easing them over his erection, he saw Ron swallowing rapidly.

 _So much for me stripping in front of you being nothing,_ he thought, but he didn't say it.  His boxers joined the rest of his clothes and Harry, feeling confident once more in his own skin in spite of his arousal, stepped up to Ron and without losing eye-contact with him began to unbutton the fly of his trousers.

 

Corduroy might be warm and pleasing to the touch, but it was a stiff, clinging material.  Harry had to really tug to pull the close-fitting trousers down over Ron's narrow hips.  He wasn't helped by what was underneath – thin cotton longjohns, standard wear for all Quidditch players who didn't want their mostly immobile legs to chill, stiffen and cramp during play – and the need to be careful around the tented cloth revealed by the unfastened fly.  Uncertain for a moment how to proceed, he was surprised when Ron gently pushed his hands aside and unfastened his underwear himself, then took hold of the waistbands of both garments and gently slipped them over his hips.  Between the two of them, the boys rolled the trousers and longjohns down his legs and Ron stepped out of them, holding Harry's shoulder lightly for balance.

 

It was done. 

 

Harry stood up, swaying slightly and breathing very rapidly.  Not allowing himself time to think, he stumbled the few short steps towards the showers and muttered the charm that set the warm spray of water going again.  Then he reached out and grabbed Ron's arm, backing into the shower and tugging the Slytherin along with him.

 

The touch of the water was a shock to skin that had cooled in the changing rooms.  Harry saw Ron shiver slightly, but it didn't look like the other boy was cold – far from it.  He wanted to touch him, run his hands over the places on his chest where the water ran down in little rivers.  Harry grabbed a sponge and reached out.

 

"Here – let me do your back – "

 _"No!"_

 

The rebuff was so sharp that Harry almost jumped back, heart suddenly hammering at a different speed – _What did I do wrong?_

 

Ron wouldn't meet his eyes, but his voice dropped.

 

"Don't …."

 

Panic turned to anger.

 

"What – why?" Harry demanded.  "I don't …."  Them watching the other boy's lowered blue eyes, a notion began to form.  "Was it all just talk, then?  Winding me up because you don't have the bottle to go through with it yourself?"

 

"It's not that!" the Slytherin snapped, stung.  "I – I don't like people touching my back, that's all."

 

Harry stared at him, bewildered.  "Why not?"

 

"Because I don't."  Ron paused, breathing rapidly in agitation, then seemed to come to a decision.  "Because I'm deformed.  Okay?  Satisfied?"

 

"No," Harry said flatly, but his mind was suddenly working fast, chewing this over.  It made a certain sense, would explain why Ron always seemed to fight so hard for a win when they played his 'strip chess' games – but why did he insist on them in the first place?  Why keep pushing Harry to strip off, to strip _him_ , if he was so afraid of his own body being seen?  "I don't get it.  This was your idea."

 

Ron shrugged, still avoiding his eyes, and Harry, watching the flow of emotion across his face, began to get an inkling of what was _really_ going on.

 

"If you didn't want me to see, you wouldn't have gone this far or told me what the problem was," he said.  "What do you think I'm going to do?  Scream?  Throw up?  Come on – it can't be _that_ bad or Malfoy would have told the whole school the first time you stripped off after Quidditch."

 

"Malfoy's never seen it," Ron said sullenly.  "None of them have.  Why do you think I hang around with you after a game, instead of getting changed straight away?"

 

Harry stared.  "But you share a dorm with him!"

 

Ron gave him a humourless smile.  "I get up _really_ early in the morning and I wait till everyone else has finished in the bathrooms before I get changed at night."

 

Holy Epona!  That was a serious effort.  Harry shared a dorm with five other boys; he knew how difficult it was to keep any kind of secret in there.  It had to be ten times worse in Slytherin, where even your 'friends' were on constant look-out for something on you they could use.

 

"Okay," he said slowly, "I get that.  I just …."  He shrugged helplessly.  "I thought this was different.  I won't look or ask again if you don't want me to, but if we're going to – you know – then I don't see how it'll work.  I'm not going to tell you to get lost just because you've got something wrong with your back, whatever it is.  We're friends, aren't we?  It's not about bodies."

 

Ron gave an odd sort of half sniff, half snort, but he looked Harry in the face again for the first time since they'd entered the shower.

 

"Is that more of that mumbo-jumbo your dad and his mates come out with?" he asked, but he was almost smiling.

 

"Yeah," Harry said a little defensively.  "I reckon they know what they're talking about.  They're old, aren't they?"

 

That made Ron grin.

 

"You are such a Hufflepuff," he said, but his tone was affectionate.

 

There was another, more comfortable silence for a minute or two, then he sniffed again and straightened his shoulders. 

 

"I s'pose I'd better let you see," he said gruffly, but he covered his anxiety poorly.

 

"It's okay," Harry said earnestly.  "Really."

 

Ron seemed to brace himself; then he turned sharply, almost defiantly, to face the wall.

 

Harry had been expecting scars, some kind of gross disfigurement of the skin, maybe evidence of a terrible burn or skin disease, or even a birthmark ….  Well, it was a birthmark of a kind, but the most extraordinary birthmark he'd ever seen.  It spread across most of Ron's back, from the shoulder-blades to just short of his hips, a series of curved lines the thickness of a finger and dark red like the facial mark sometimes called a port-wine stain.  And it was almost symmetrical, like a pair of feathery wings spread across his shoulders, similar to the stylised phoenix carved into the panelled door of the Headmistress's office. 

 

And seeing it, Harry thought that he understood.  He knew how superstitious the wizarding world was; being born with near-perfect 'wings', Ron's relatives and their friends must have exclaimed in wonder and seers begged for an opportunity to explain the symbolism.  The attention would have been frightening, particularly if anyone decided it was an omen.  No wonder Ron was so reluctant to let anyone see it now, especially the other Slytherins.

 

After a moment, Ron said in a muffled voice, "When I was really small, my Gran used to tell me that fairies had kissed me in the cradle and tried to give me wings."  He snorted, but it was a half-hearted sound.  "Not true, of course.  I was breach-born – feet first, you know? – and early too.  The midwife had to help me along and something she did – did _that_.  My other Gran, Mum's mum, kicked up a fuss when she saw it and made Mum keep me covered up all the time.  She said it was a bad omen."

 

Well, that confirmed _that_ theory.

 

"What a load of crap!" Harry said sharply.  "It's just a birthmark, Ron.  It's something to do with all the little veins under the skin – my mum's got one on her neck, she explained it to me.  The Muggles have a way of getting rid of them," he added.

 

Ron look over his shoulder sharply.  "What do you mean?"

 

"I don't know much about it.  Mum just said they did.  But even if you could get rid of it, I don't think you should," Harry said.  His fingers itched to touch the pattern, to see if it felt different to the surrounding skin, but he made himself reach out and turn Ron around instead.  "It's not ugly," he said sincerely.  "It's just part of _you_."

 

"Yeah, right," Ron muttered. 

 

"Do I ever lie to you?"

 

"No," the other boy admitted.  His shoulders hunched.  "I still wish it wasn't there."

 

"I get that," Harry said, "but you don't have to hide it from me anymore.  And I swear I won't ever tell."

 

"Okay."

 

They looked at each other for a moment and Harry found himself noticing the way the water from the shower was running over Ron's shoulders again.  The warm, tingling sensation that had subsided for a few moments was back and he felt a tightening in his groin.  Swallowing, he held up the sponge.

 

"Let me wash your back now?"

 

Ron was still uneasy about it, he could tell, but the redhead nodded and slowly turned to face the wall again. 

 

Now that he understood a little better, Harry tried to look at the birthmarks detachedly as he squeezed and rubbed the self-soaping sponge to make it lather.  It was hard to see them as he guessed Ron saw them; as a collection of ugly marks, nothing more.  The image was uncannily like a bird in flight, somehow primitive and meaningful, like paintings made on the walls of the caves he had visited with his mother two summers previously.  There was magic in those cave pictures – "Fertility magic," Lily Evans had told her son matter-of-factly, "like the image of the god carved into the hill at Cerne Abbas" – and as he very gently passed the sponge over the 'wings' spread across Ron's shoulders, unconsciously following their lines, Harry couldn't help wondering if there was some kind of magic in this.  Very little, his father and uncles told him, ever happened in magic without a purpose.

 

Ron twitched under his ministrations, the muscles under his skin rippling almost imperceptibly at the touch of the sponge.  Harry murmured soothingly and stroked the sponge down his friend's spine, watching in pleasure the way his buttocks clenched in reaction to the touch.  He followed the movement with a hand and discovered that he'd been right – the birthmarks did feel just a tiny bit warmer than the surrounding skin.  He liked that, and liked the way the warm water ran over both Ron's skin and his hand where he touched him, and the way it darkened his friend's red hair to a rich mahogany.  He leaned in and touched his lips to the spot in halfway between Ron's shoulder-blades where the two 'wings' met and smiled at the other boy's sudden tiny gasp in response.  When he touched his tongue to the spot instead, using it to memorise the different textures and temperatures of the skin, the response was a full body shiver.

 

Harry reached out and gently guided Ron's hands to the wall to support him, then pressed himself up against the redhead's back, wrapping his arms around his chest and gently running the sponge over his stomach, chest and nipples, mapping his body by touch, from the length of his shoulders, back, buttocks and thighs against Harry's own body to his nipples, pectoral muscles and belly.  He waited until Ron relaxed a little under the onslaught, then reached between his legs with both hands and sponge and brought his erection up as hard as a wand.

 

It didn't take much; two or three firm strokes and Ron tensed, almost sobbing as he came.

 

Harry almost came with him, just from the friction of their bodies rubbing together and the knowledge of what he was doing to his friend.  He stilled for a moment, waiting for Ron to recover, and thus wasn't prepared for Ron suddenly turning in his arms and pushing him around until his back was up against the wall.

 

His face, neck and chest were flushed, almost as scarlet as Harry's own when he blushed, and his blue eyes were fiercely bright, fixed on Harry's as he dropped to his knees in front of him.  Before Harry's brain could fully catch up with his friend's intentions, Ron was gripping his hips to hold him still and his hot mouth was engulfing him.

 

Harry came on the spot with a shout (something he would look back upon with embarrassment later, although Ron clearly saw it as an achievement).

 

Afterwards, his legs gave way and he slid down the wall to sit on the tiles.  He and Ron huddled together there for a long time, the charmed water of the shower pouring down on them like warm tropical rainfall. 

 

It wasn't, Harry reflected tiredly, how he had expected sex with Ron to be.  And he was glad about that, because this was better; this had happened on his terms and something more important than fooling around had happened between them, something that involved trust.  Suddenly their friendship had turned a corner and developed new layers.

 

He could just barely see the upper outlines of Ron's birthmark from where he was sitting and he reached out to touch it, pleased when his friend didn't flinch or twitch at all.

 

"Maybe it _is_ magic after all," he murmured.

 

"What do you mean?" Ron asked, just a little bit wary.

 

Harry smiled.  "Like the cave paintings – sex magic."

 

Ron snorted at this whimsy.  "More like catching the Snitch."

 

Harry looked at him, brows twitching up.  "How would you know?  You're a Keeper."

 

"I didn't say who was doing the catching, did I?"

 

 **\- The End -**


End file.
